Thursday, February 7, 2013

[My Life With Rudolph] The Setting

As I mentioned earlier, I've run two games of "My Life With Rudolph," using the excellent My Life With Master rules.

In each game, the minions of Rudolph were denizens of Christmas Town, from the classic 1964 Rankin/Bass stop-motion television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

I took 8 of the characters from the show for minions: Clarice and Fireball (the two other reindeer young friends of Rudoph), Yukon Cornelius, Hermey the Dentist Elf, Sam the Snowman, Hank the Tall Elf, Charlie-In-The-Box and The Bumble. I also added a 9th minion, a magical Talking Wolf. Each of these minions has some ability that is more than human and another ability that is less than human.

I started each game by handing out the characters and letting the players choose which they wanted. I explained the rules and let the players divide a set amount of points between Self-loathing and Weariness for each character. We discussed possible connections the PCs would have in Christmas Town, then I set the Fear and Reason levels for the game and we started.

I told them that Rudolph summoned them to his cave for the first of his orders to them:

"Burn down the Christmas Tree Forest!"

In the first game, at this first evil command from Rudolph, one of the players said to the rest of the group "Yeah, guys, this is the high-water mark. Things are not going to get better from this point on!"